Tough Mudder

I've done a few tris, and a marathon. Part of why I did it , was just to see if I could do it. Training for an iron man takes so much time (literally 20, 30 hours a week) . But I am known for it, I guess. At least around the office.

A colleague of mine suggested a new kind of race , that he'd heard about recently. The Tough Mudder.

I've heard of similiar races in New England. I can't recall the name, but it was something where you ran up a hill carrying a big log. The race itself seems pared down to a sort of test of both endurance and pain. It will never be an actual sport; it is more of an event.

Someone once told me that things like this are part of who we are in the 21st century. They said that we are isolated ourselves from nature, and that when we return as return we must - we drink ever deeper from the wellspring. The tough mudder might be more like trying to drink from a fire hydrant.

We should not ignore things like this. My feet itch alot and peel at the soles. This is because their natural state, all of my life - was calloused and now that I'm at a desk - and then commute home in a car, to sit on a sofa, then a chair - is that they are growing soft and they don't know what to do with themselves. I ran once over hard ground, in the summer time. My feet toughened up almost immediately and stayed fine for nearly two weeks.

I have no problem training for a triathlon. They really feel good. But Tough Mudder seems to be a different beast. The dealbreaker for me, at the moment, is the field full of razor wire. I have seen videos of people running through it and getting cut and scraped. The race itself, is only 10 miles but it's over alot of different obstacles - initially designed by British Special Forces. The razorwire obvious has application during wartime but running a footrace without a shirt, is a bit different than running through a field in full battle gear. I will not cut myself intentionally. If I can find a way to get through the field of razor wire without getting cut, I'll think about it.